SHORT STORIES

by Robert J. Sawyer

Short Stories

Robert J. Sawyer's
short stories have been called everything from
"quietly intelligent" (Booklist)
to "gobsmacking" (Publishers Weekly).
You'll find the full text of the following
Rob Sawyer short stories available right here:

"Just Like Old Times"  a time-travel yarn,
the lead story in the anthology Dinosaur Fantastic, 1993.
Midnight Zoo called it "a marvelous story." Winner
of both the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award and the Aurora Award
(4,800 words).

"The Shoulders of Giants" 
the lead story in the 2000 anthology Star Colonies. A sleeper ship arrives
at a supposedly uninhabited planet.
Finalist for the 2001 Aurora Award (5,800 words).

"Star Light, Star Bright" 
from the 2000 anthology Far Frontiers.
A community living on the surface of a Dyson Sphere
discovers the universe (4,800 words).

"The Hand You're Dealt"  from the 1997 anthology
Free Space. A murder mystery set aboard a space habitat.
Finalist for the Hugo Award for best short story of the year;
winner of the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for
best short story of the year; finalist for the Aurora Award and the Crime
Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for best short story
of the year (6,500 words).

Bonus: my notes on the science in this
story, and my introduction to the story's Polish edition.

"Forever"  from the 1997 anthology
Return of the Dinosaurs.
A tale of intelligent dinosaurs during the Mesozoic.
Honorable Mention in Gardner Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction
(3,200 words).

"Gator"  from the 1997 anthology
Urban Nightmares. The truth behind the stories about
alligators in the sewers of New York City. Honorable mention in
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (4,400 words).

"Iterations" 
the lead story in Transversions: An Anthology of New Fantastic Literature, 2000.
A story of revenge across multiple timelines. (3,800 words).

"Stream of Consciousness" 
First published in the 1999 anthology Packing Fraction.
An alien ship crashes in Sudbury. Winner of the Aurora Award (4,100 words).

"Wiping Out" 
from the 2000 anthology Guardsmen of Tomorrow.
How do you achieve closure on an interstellar war lasting 500 years?
A homage to James White (4,300 words).

"The Blue Planet"  from
the December 11, 1999, edition of
The Globe and Mail, following the loss of the Mars Polar Lander.
Reprinted in Hartwell's Year's Best SF 5
(1,500 words).

"Above It All"  from the 1996
anthology Dante's Disciples.
A dark-fantasy story set aboard the Mir space station.
Winner of the CompuServe HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year
(4,400 words).

"The Eagle Has Landed" 
from the 2005 anthology I, Alien.
An alien explorer watches Earth's progress in space exploration from
a vantage point on the moon.
(2,500 words).

"Fallen Angel"  from
the 2000 anthology Lisa Snellings' Strange Attraction:
Turns of the Midnight Carnival Wheel.
A young circus performer fears falling.
Finalist for the Bram Stoker Award
for Best Short Story of the Year, and one of three stories cited
as "highlights" from this the anthology by the Denver
Rocky Mountain News (4,700 words).

"The Stanley Cup Caper" 
a short-short commissioned by The Toronto Star in honour of the
World Science Fiction Convention coming to Toronto for the first time in
30 years (1,000 words).

"Ours to Discover" 
a short-short by Robert J. Sawyer, plus other short-shorts by
Terence M. Green and Andrew Weiner, introduced by John Robert Colombo,
from the November 1982 issues of Leisure Ways (800 words).

"The Transformed Man"  from
the 2010 anthology Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories.
Finalist for the 2011 Aurora Award in the category of best poem (!) (1,000 words).

Story from Audible.com

A number of my novels are available from Audible.com, but
if you want to check out my short stories, there is only one available:

"Identity Theft," first published in
Down These Dark Spaceways,
then reprinted in Nebula Awards Showcase 2007. Both these anthologies
were edited by Mike Resnick.

"Identity Theft" won Spain's top science fiction award
the Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción,
for Best Novella of the Year. It was a finalist for both the Hugo and
Nebula Awards in 2005.

It's a hard-boiled dectective story set on Mars. It is also the beginning of my
novel Red Planet Blues.

"Science Fiction fans everywhere will find something to enjoy in
Iterations and Other Stories, a collection of short stories
from Hugo and Nebula award winner Robert J. Sawyer. With a vast
array of subjects, the short stories range in perspective from
that of a T-Rex to that of the pope, and many of the tales are
award winners or finalists in their own right. Iterations and
Other Stories is a fine addition to any short fiction collection
focusing on science fiction." [5 out of 5 stars]
Midwest Review of Books

Relativity: Essays and Stories

An eclectic mix of short stories, speeches, articles, plus all
twelve "On Writing" columns are collected in
Relativity, published
in hardcover in November 2004,
by ISFiC Press of Chicago, Illinois. Winner of the Aurora Award for
Best Work in English (Other).